Treating *any* minority different than the rest of the society is wrong, and somehow it would have been an insult to all moderate and secular muslims to perform double standards; it was provocative, yes, but certainly *not* in any way ment to be racist, uncivilized or dirty. "Infidels" are beheaded on video in the name of God and the Prophet; you tell me, which is more blasphemeous?

That said, it surely wasn't a wise move to publish the cartoons. Surely a lot of people *were* offended (and the newspaper *did* issue an apology), but it seems as if li'l ol' Denmark is a perfect target when letting out all the steam and frustration that's, perhaps understandably, been build up in the muslim world. It's a free ride to boycot and threaten Denmark because of its small size and supposed political unimportance.

Few take notice of Denmark's work when it comes to support of a peacefull two-state solution in the Israel-Palestine conflict, the rights of the chechen citizens (except perhaps the russians...) or the attempt do fuel a better dialogue between the Middle East and the Western World. But that's all down the drain now, because of a few cartoons of which only two were truely offensive, IMHO.

Now do tell me, what if somebody suddenly finds the syntax of LISP offensive and wants you to change it or face the fury of a world religion...?

So it ended up in a programming forum, too bad. But at least it's forcing non-Muslims and moderate Muslims to realize that Islam has a serious problem with a prevalent culture of violence. Anyone who has actually read the Koran could, at least in part, correctly characterize it as blood-soaked, there's so much in there about killing non-believers and adulterers in myriad ways. That's bad enough, and needs to be confronted without the smothering relativism that is political correctness. Worse is that radical clerics and madrasas emphasize these teachings in radicalizing their students. But what's worst of all? That the non-Muslim and moderate Muslim population have endured this for so long. These riots may not do it, but eventually fundamentalist Islam will shout in our ears with a voice louder than we've ever heard that it needs to be stamped out.

I am quite astonished that this is such a controversial subject. Isn't it a natural part of religious freedom to not enforce the rules of your own belief on non-believers? I would recommend every Muslim to just unsubscribe the Jyllands Posten if they feel offended by it.

On the other hand, the fuelling of outrage as it happened in the Islamic world is not foreign to Western culture, but seems to be inspired precisely by multiculturalism and victim culture in Western societies.

The problem with the image in my opinion is that it demands zero tolerance for intolerance, while the strength of Western civilisation is showing exactly in that we can be tolerant even with the intolerant.

The liberal discourse seems to confuse tolerance and respect here. Of course we should not respect stupid Mullahs but we should tolerate their hate speech nevertheless. And we should be proud of the fact that we are not so uncivilized as Islamic countries that cannot handle critical opinion.

If we do not do this, we should be careful with any claims of freedom of speech in our own societies.

Sadly Unthinking Muslim In The Street: "We hate you, and these cartoons are our excuse to destroy your things. Especially Ronald McDonald and Colonal Sanders, those two Leading Western Infidels (great name for a rock band, and .25 royalties to Dave Barry) who are obviously part of the Danish Newspaper Cabal (Dave says, 'Cha-ching!'). We tolerated your Extra Crispy and the McNuggets ('Ching!') and the jobs, but now you've gone too far.So now I will allow myslef to be led around by the nose by my insane religious leaders and blame America. And, oh yeah, almost forgot: Death to Israel."

Most sadly, the average workaday Muslim who abhors these attacks will be lumped into the nut stew, a la the workaday Christians in America who get tarred with the brush of intolerance meant for the Religious Far Right (now that's a metaphor, baby...feel free to copy).